Rendlio licensing has two layers, and they are deliberately independent:

1. **The source licence** — the Business Source License 1.1 (BUSL) that governs the engine's public source code.
2. **The licence file** — a small signed file, `Rendlio.license`, that turns off the evaluation watermark in shipped builds. It is verified fully offline; the engine never phones home.

The licensor and commercial counterparty in both layers is the **Rendlio Association (Verein Rendlio)**, Switzerland.

:::caution[Reflects counsel-review drafts]
The exact BUSL parameter text — the revenue test, the competing-offering definition, and the community self-certification wording — is currently drafted for review by Swiss counsel and is **not yet operative**. This guide reflects those drafts. Once issued, the `LICENSE` file in the engine repository and the terms presented at checkout are the authoritative texts.
:::

## The source licence, in plain words

The engine's source is published under the **Business Source License 1.1** — source-available, with these parameters (draft, per the note above):

- **Everyone** may read, copy, modify, redistribute, and make **non-production** use of the code — development, testing, evaluation, proof-of-concept — without any condition on revenue.
- **Production use is free under USD 1M.** If your total annual revenue in your most recently completed fiscal year was under USD 1,000,000 (self-certified — nobody audits you), you may use Rendlio in production for free.
- **One fence, regardless of revenue:** you may not offer Rendlio itself as the product — a hosted or managed file-conversion service, an API whose principal function is converting spreadsheets for third parties, or redistribution as a component/SDK for third-party developers. Those rights are what the paid tiers sell.
- **Your own SaaS is fine.** An application or service that *uses* Rendlio internally — an invoicing product that renders PDF invoices, a reporting platform that exports workbooks — is not a competing offering. Building your own product with the engine is expressly the intended use, on the free grant (under USD 1M) and in every paid tier.
- **The four-year Apache flip.** Each released version carries a Change Date four years after its release. On that date, that version's licence automatically becomes **Apache 2.0** — full open source. This is written into the licence itself, not a promise that can be withdrawn later.

Above USD 1M revenue, or for the fenced-off uses (hosted conversion services, redistribution to third-party developers), you buy a commercial licence — see the tiers below.

## Tiers

Licensing is **per legal entity, with unlimited developers** — there is no seat counting of any kind. Enterprise covers a corporate group: the licence file itself lists the covered affiliates. All paid licences are one-time purchases that include 12 months of maintenance (new builds); see [perpetual fallback](#the-perpetual-fallback) for what happens after.

| Tier | Who it is for | List price (USD, one-time) | Availability |
|---|---|---|---|
| **Community** | Any entity under USD 1M annual revenue, self-certified | Free | Self-serve at launch — [request](/community) |
| **Trial** | Anyone evaluating watermark-free; business email required | Free, 30 days | Self-serve at launch — [request](/trial) |
| **Founding** | Early supporters at launch (limited count); the fee is credited toward Professional at GA | 1,000 | On sale at launch |
| **Early Access** | Beta adopters | 1,199 | On sale during beta |
| **Professional** | One legal entity, unlimited developers, SaaS/OEM use of your own products included | 1,499 | Price published now; on sale at GA |
| **Enterprise** | A corporate group: named affiliates, third-party-converter/SDK redistribution right, source escrow, priority support | 3,999 | Price published now; on sale at GA |

Maintenance renewals are one-time purchases at **40% of the then-current list price** (Professional 599, Enterprise 1,599), extending `maintenance_until` by 12 months. Founding terms — including the credit toward Professional at GA and the fallback promises — are stated in full in the [founding offer terms](/legal/founding-terms); the [pricing page](/pricing) summarizes them.

**Community and the source grant are one test.** The community tier's eligibility (under USD 1M, self-certified, per entity) is deliberately the same test as the BUSL production grant, with the same wording, so you can never satisfy one and fail the other.

## How the licence file works

A licence is one file, recommended name `Rendlio.license`: a single ASCII line — a compact **JWS token signed with ES256** (ECDSA P-256/SHA-256). Its claims are the whole story:

| Claim | Meaning |
|---|---|
| `sub` | The exact legal entity name of the licensee |
| `tier` | `community` \| `trial` \| `founding` \| `early_access` \| `professional` \| `enterprise` |
| `lic` | The licence id (GUID) — quoted in support and reissue workflows |
| `maintenance_until` | The date that gates which *builds* the licence covers (see below) |
| `iat` | Issue timestamp — drives the trial's 30-day window |
| `affiliates` | Enterprise only: every covered legal entity, listed by name |

### Verified offline — no phone-home, ever

Verification is a pure signature check against **public keys embedded in the binary**. No activation step, no licence server, no hardware locking, no per-seat metering. Concretely, the engine **never**: opens a network connection for any purpose; reads hardware identifiers, hostnames, or usernames; writes licensing state anywhere; emits telemetry. The compatibility report never contains the licensee identity. This is a contractual product promise, not just an implementation detail — which is also why the licence works unchanged on [air-gapped hosts](/docs/deployment#air-gapped-hosts).

### Where to put the file

The engine resolves at most one licence source — first match wins, no merging:

1. `--license <path>` on the command line
2. `RENDLIO_LICENSE` environment variable (a file path **or** the licence text itself, inline)
3. `Rendlio.license` in the current working directory
4. `~/.rendlio/Rendlio.license` (your user profile directory)
5. Nothing found → evaluation watermark mode + warning `W9001`

Note that even the free Community tier requires a minted file: `--license community` asserts the Community tier when a community licence file is present, but bare `community` without a minted file is invalid (exit 3). Minting is self-serve and takes a minute — [request it here](/community).

### The perpetual fallback

`maintenance_until` does **not** expire your licence — it gates which builds it covers:

- A licence is valid for a build iff the build's release date is on or before `maintenance_until`. Every such build is covered **forever**.
- A build released *after* `maintenance_until` runs in evaluation mode (warning `W9006`) until maintenance is renewed. Nothing you already run ever stops working.

So a Professional licence bought today runs today's build, and every build released in the next 12 months, perpetually. Renewal only buys access to newer builds.

### Trials, and what happens without a licence

- **Trial licences** are valid 30 days from issue (`iat`), measured against the system UTC clock — and nothing else. Yes, rolling the clock back extends a trial; we accept that openly, because defeating it would require hidden state, fingerprinting, or network checks, all of which violate the zero-phone-home promise.
- **No licence (or an expired one)** means **evaluation mode**: full features, identical fidelity, but every output page carries a diagonal "Rendlio Evaluation" watermark and the run emits `W9001` — so watermarked conversions exit 1 at best, never 0, and pipelines notice. There is deliberately no feature-crippled tier.
- A broken licence file that was *discovered* (steps 3–4 above) degrades gracefully to evaluation mode (`W9003`); a broken licence you passed *explicitly* (steps 1–2) is a hard error (exit 3) — you asked for that file specifically, so silence would be wrong.

### Inspecting and validating

```bash
rendlio license info               # who, which tier, maintenance date, verdict — exit 0 always
rendlio license validate acme.license   # scriptable check: exit 0 valid / 3 invalid
```

`license info` also tells you whether the current build is covered ("valid for this build" / "expired for builds after …" / "watermark mode"). Full command details: [CLI reference](/docs/cli/license).

## Which tier am I?

Work down the list; the first match is your tier.

1. **Just evaluating, developing, or testing?** You need no licence at all — evaluation mode is free, unlimited, and full-featured; only the watermark differs. Want to evaluate watermark-free? [Request a 30-day trial](/trial) (business email required).
2. **Total annual revenue under USD 1M** (self-certified, per legal entity) **and you are not offering conversion itself as a service to third parties?** → **Community**, free. [Mint your licence](/community) — the file is required even on the free tier.
3. **One legal entity, revenue USD 1M or above, shipping your own products** — including your own SaaS that uses Rendlio internally? → **Professional.**
4. **A corporate group that needs affiliates covered, or you redistribute the engine to third-party developers** (SDK, component, embedded converter), **or you need source escrow and priority support?** → **Enterprise.**
5. **Want to adopt before GA?** → **Founding** at launch (limited count, credited toward Professional at GA) or **Early Access** during beta. See [pricing](/pricing).

Unusual structure (a sub-USD-1M subsidiary of a large group, revenue vs. funding questions)? The revenue definition is one of the points explicitly under counsel review — when in doubt, ask us before self-certifying.

## Next steps

- [Quickstart — Get a licence](/docs/quickstart#get-a-licence) — placing the licence file, in practice
- [Deployment](/docs/deployment) — licences in Docker, CI, and air-gapped environments
- [Pricing](/pricing) — the tier cards, founding terms, and checkout